New trends in Russian family life

July 28 2014

Anastasía Máltseva

specially for RIR

Most Russians consider their primary goal to be to start a family and raise good children. Source: ITAR-TASS

Most Russians assert that they strive towards a healthy, close-knit family and marriage for life. However, sociologists point to research indicating that in reality, Russia's citizenry behaves otherwise, engaging in infidelity, divorce, and homosexuality.

In early June, the Russian government presented a report
entitled “Conception of State Family Policy for the Period up to 2025”. The
document pointed to the crisis in the Russian family in the late 1990s and
early 2000s, citing the effects of low fertility rates, the prevalence of
divorce, and the weakness of family ties. The government's new policy seeks to
remedy this situation.

At first glance, ordinary Russians appear to understand the
role and meaning of the family in the same way that politicians do. The newly
published policy concept describes traditional family values as the government
understands them: marriage for the purpose of bearing and raising children on
the basis of mutual respect among all family members.

Russia’s Public Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM) conducted
a survey in March 2012, the results of which showed that 93 percent of Russians
consider their primary goal to be to start a family and raise good children.

The Zircon Research Group carried out a similar study in
July and August 2013, finding that almost half of Russians (43 percent) view
the ideal family as requiring formal lifelong marriage: a full family with a
mother, father, and children, ruled by love, mutual understanding, and respect
for elders.

However, the reality is far from the ideal: Only 11 percent
of respondents believe that their own families live up to these parameters.

New family values

Leonty Byzov, sociologist and head of VTSIOM's Analytical
Department, is certain that people only pay lip service to the government's
family policy, which has no influence on their own behavior.

“In reality, Russians practice precisely that which they
strongly condemn: They divorce, cheat on their spouses, and engage in homosexual
behavior,” the sociologist said.

Starting in the 1990s, the family values of Russian youth
underwent drastic changes during Russia's sexual and feminist revolution, said
Tatyana Gurko, doctor of social sciences and section head of family sociology
at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology, in an interview
with Gazeta.ru. Those same processes of feminism and sexual revolution began to
take hold in the United States and Europe 30 years earlier, in the 1960s.

“During the past decade, the family values of young people
have been starting to exclude an expectation of lifelong marriage. The new
generation, including those with children of their own, has loyalties that lie
with successive marriages, children out of wedlock, cohabitation with unmarried
partners, and even infidelity,” Gurko said.

According to her, today’s Russian youth does not believe
that “every woman should become a mother” and also welcomes equality in
relations between partners.

Families in large and small cities

Russia has a high number of marriages, divorces, and
remarriages, in contrast with European countries, where both marriages and
divorces are few, and Muslim countries, which have many marriages but few
divorces.

In recent years, however, the rate of early marriage (from
18-24 years of age) among Russians has halved, Gurko told Gazeta.ru. According
to Gurko, in 1980, 62 percent of young men and 68 percent of young women
married early, figures which fell to a respective 29 percent and 44 percent in
2011. Most young people now delay marriage until the ages of 25-34.

Gurko noted that values first began to change in large
cities, where young people often marry but remain childless. In Russia's
regions, early marriages and child rearing remain popular in small cities with
low standards of living.

Having children out of marriage is also a phenomenon
with an ethnic and regional character; it is more common in Siberia and the
Urals. According to census data, children born out of wedlock account for 68
percent of births in the Republic of Tuva (along the border with Mongolia) and
56 percent of births in the Koryak Autonomous Area (in the Kamchatka Territory
in the Far East).

According to Gurko, the new generation of youth in large
cities adopts infantile modes of behavior, continuing to live with their
parents even after graduating from university.

“As a result, they do not develop a feeling of
responsibility for their partner and their own children. Families in large
Russian cities more and more resort to private services for childcare, elder
care, and housework,” the expert said.

Byzov added that Russian society today is fractured and
atomized, with the majority of people having few social ties.

“The circle of loved ones has narrowed to exclude all but
parents and children. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents are
often not included. The real social values of Russians are at odds with their
espoused values. In place of family values, we frequently see values of personal
growth, success, career, and one's own welfare,” the expert explained.